Editorial -

NAMING NAMES

The war against drug trafficking isn't going to be won by press releases,
photo ops and shame campaigns. How many times will this have to be drummed
into the heads of the people leading this war?

Yesterday President Arroyo said the government would soon name the most
notorious drug barons operating in the country. The President said she had
ordered the intelligence community to disclose the names as soon as enough
evidence could be gathered against the drug lords and their coddlers. The
intelligence community, she added, already had a list of the drug barons
and their protectors.

This begs the question: If the drug barons and their coddlers are known,
how come they have not been arrested? The answer is clear, and the
President herself said as much: there isn't enough evidence. Without
evidence, there is no drug case. If the government publishes the names of
these suspects without enough evidence, either the government gets slapped
with lawsuits, or the drug barons and their coddlers are sufficiently
alerted to stop operations and skip town.

Such an ill-advised directive to the intelligence community betrays
presidential impatience with the anti-drug campaign. But the war against
drug trafficking cannot be won overnight, unless a president is willing to
follow the lead of Thailand's Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra and look
the other way when thousands of people are executed in the name of the
campaign against drugs. This President Arroyo isn't willing to do;
Filipinos flinch at the site of the first dead bodies bearing cardboard
signs identifying them as shabu dealers. So the President is stuck with
upholding the rule of law in her war against drug trafficking.

This is one campaign that requires infinite patience, meaning it can't be
very useful for election purposes, especially when polls are only a few
months away. The best that the President can do is to summon those who drew
up that purported list of drug traffickers and ask them: If these drug
barons are known, how come they have not been arrested?